Revision as of 15:42, 24 April 2011

What is MoJo?

MoJo is an abbreviation (Mozilla + Journalism) for the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership, a 3 year project that will place creative thinkers with open web skillsets within 15 news organizations for yearlong, paid fellowships. Knight-Mozilla fellows will be tasked with developing new journalism tools built on open technologies.

To find and cultivate the 15 fellows with great ideas, we will host a series of innovation challenges, online workshops, and in-person hackfests (or MoJoCamps)

Who's involved?

Currently, the Knight Foundation and Mozilla are the primary partners. We launched with 4 news partners who will host some of the first fellows: BBC, Boston.com, the Guardian, and Zeit Online. We welcome any individual or organization interested in solving journalism's technology challenges to participate in the growing community that is supporting the project.

Who is the Knight Foundation?

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation advances journalism in the digital age and invests in the vitality of communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Knight Foundation focuses on projects that promote informed and engaged communities and lead to transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

Why is Mozilla interested in media and journalism?

The news industry is a major player in the web space, and it is at a crossroads. Many players are making important web technology decisions and investments that will shape how we experience the web for years to come. We want to provide news organizations with open technology options as they make those decisions. Because news it as the center of many people's web use, this is an opportunity to reach a huge population with Mozilla's open web values and working open technology.

Is this initiative intended primarily for journalists, developers, or both?

To be successful, we'll need a diverse set of minds coming to the table and offering ideas. We hope that the cohort of fellows will be a diverse group with backgrounds in web development and design, journalism, and more. It's possible that there is an artist or a statistician out there with a great idea and the skills to implement it, and they are very welcome to enter an innovation challenge and win a fellowship.

Who is eligible for a Knight-Mozilla fellowship? How do I apply for a Knight-Mozilla fellowship?

Anyone who participates in one of our upcoming news innovation challenges is eligible for a fellowship. Fellows will be selected from those who advance from the innovation challenge to complete our online course (aka "the learning lab") and our in-person hacking event.

What kinds of organizations are eligible to host Knight-Mozilla fellows?

We want to place our fellows at host organizations where they will experience day-to-day production of original news content. The first criterion for organizations that will host fellows is that they are news-producing. In today's world, that could include a lot of organizations. People who complete the fellowship will not only demonstrate their technical (or creative, design) chops, but they will also become experts in implementing innovations within the news-production context.

If your organizations supports, but does not produce, journalism, consider partnering with news organization to request a fellow.

How can I get involved?

What do you mean by "the open web" and "open technology?

Implementations we develop through MoJo will be built using open standards, and widely shareable and remixable by any news organization and other interested parties.

We're also interested in developing mobile news implementations, and are interested in HTML5 for mobile over native applications. Here's an interesting background post on this issue from one of our news partners, Zeit Online.

How do the innovation challenges work?

Over the coming weeks, we will host a series of challenges, asking people to offer solutions to specific news technology problems. Anyone can enter the challenge by submitting a basic description of their idea and some supporting media (pictures are great). We'll have a voting period to get feedback on the proposals, and select a limited number of people to continue on to the next phases - an online workshop (aka "the learning lab") and our in-person hacking event. The most promising hackfest participants will be invited to participate in the fellowship.

When is the first innovation challenge happening?

The 2011 challenge cycle begins on April 25th, 2011. See the calendar for more detailed information. In 2012, we will launch 3-5 more challenges, so there are many windows of opportunities to enter.

Are you concentrating on large news organizations or small ones?

We want the mix of organizations that host fellows to be representative of many sides of the news ecosystem, so we hope to work with some smaller organizations. We also need to ensure that fellows will be working in organizations that have the capacity and investment in innovation that will set them up for success, and the Partnership's success will be judged partially on how widely the technologies we develop are adopted. These needs suggest that we should include larger organizations with strong capacity and influence. Balance is key; check out a recent post on the question here.

I don't speak English very well or live in the U.S. Can I still participate?

It will be challenging to participate without a working knowledge of English. But we are an inclusive community and welcome participants from around the world. We strive for Mojo to be an international program. In fact, four of our five partners in 2011 will host fellows outside of the US! Anyone in the world with web access and working English skills should be able to participate in the challenge and the broader conversation we are hosting.